Video phone Arduino shield

We’ve seen Arduino-powered Twitter machines, and even some that can send text messages, but how about one that’s a video phone? That’s what the guys over at Cooking Hacks put together with their very impressive 3G Arduino shield.

On board the shield is an internal GPS receiver, microphone, speaker, 3G module, and a camera sensor with VGA resolution. The 3G module is able to act as a 3G modem via a USB connection, allowing any computer to take advantage of wireless Internet with a SIM card.

While in their tutorial the guys use a terminal running on their computer to send AT commands to place a call, it’s possible to simply put all that info in a sketch making for a small, battery-powered video link straight to your cell phone. Seems like the perfect piece of hardware for a wireless, 3G-enabled video feed for a robot. You can check out the video from their tutorial after the break.

That’s actually what I ended up using. I use Ting (https://zrndrliqc.ting.com/) as the provider and got the cheapest android they have, wrote all my software in java. I get charged like $6 a month if I don’t use it, and only get charged for whatever else I actually use. Built my own lojack system that activates the GPRS when my car moves beyond an area and starts reporting the coordinates, and will allow me to take pictures and listen remotely.

The people of cutedigi.com have copied the cooking-hacks design, the documentation and code examples are the same!!! Even the code comments are identical…!!! The 3G shield of cooking hacks works properly, maybe something complicated for beginners, but with a very good support and documentation.

Cutedigi.com has had that shield for awhile now, made by linksprite. It’s only $99 US but you need external antennas. If you need a cell & or gps connection it’s the best value considering everything that’s on it, it’s 3G too.